I have told one travel agency to hold a cabin for me. In the meantime another travel agency has offered to get me a cabin at the same price.
The second agency will stay on top of the pricing for the cabiin to make sure if it goes down I will get the benefit of the lower price. The first agency has not offered this service. Is the reservation made in my name or the travel agency's name. Can I switch to the second travel agency and retain the same cabin as originally reserved?

Kuki

August 5th, 2013 03:46 PM

The answer to your question is "both" (sort of). The reservation is in your name, but under the travel agent's control.

I'll assume for a minute that the agent placed a "courtesy hold" on it, as opposed to having you put down a deposit.

In that case you just have to let the courtesy hold expire, and the other agent watch for it to be released, and then grab it.

If you placed a deposit, you'd have to have the agent you booked with release the booking to you to transfer to the other agent.

No doubt if you asked the first agent if they follow the booking for price drops they'd say yes.

But.. honestly, I don't believe any agent will check your booking daily or twice daily for price drops. Everyone should be watching for price drops themselves, as it's very easy to do online, and good agents are too busy to babysit all their reservation that closely.

shazam

August 5th, 2013 05:22 PM

Thank you for quick response.

iuki

August 6th, 2013 10:33 AM

You might also want to check to see if there are any cancellation fees by your TA. Many people use TAs and are not aware of the cancellation fees. If I were you, I'd ask your TA if they would reduce your rate due to price drops? If they do, like another poster said, keep checking on prices, and let them know of the price reduction. On our second cruise, our TA gave us the final bill which was lower than what we originally purchased. Never had another TA like that. We now book ourselves. ;)l

storybookcruises.com

August 6th, 2013 01:44 PM

You have gotten great information on this subject.

Kuki stated it very well as to how the process works.

And iuki added some wonderful additional information.

The only thing I can add is to say that most reputable agents will monitor your rates for any specials they can get for you. But even if they do, it's always a very good idea to monitor your own rates. As was stated, an agent simply cannot monitor every rate, every day, for every client - just physically impossible. So I suggest just looking at the cruise line's website once a week, especially on Tuesdays, to see what's going on.

But once you've found a good agent that you trust, stay with them as they will look after you and help build a good working relationship.